For decades, many countries around the world have provided telephone users and subscribers direct telephone access to local emergency service providers or dispatchers through a dedicated telephone number. Emergency telephone numbers are meant to be used by a caller in need of urgent assistance and differ from region to region, but are often one or more short number sequences, such as 911 and 999, that can be easily recalled and dialed quickly.
In many localities, calls to an emergency telephone number are not routed directly to service providers such as police, firefighting, medical or ambulance services, or other public safety personnel, but are instead directed to a call center called a Public Safety Answering Point or Public Safety Access Point (PSAP), staffed by operators trained to obtain relevant information from callers necessary to dispatch the appropriate emergency services to the correct location. In some areas, when the emergency telephone number is dialed, routing infrastructure in the telecommunications system automatically associates a physical address with the calling party's telephone number, known as Caller Location Information (CLI), and routes the call to the most appropriate PSAP for that address. Commonly when this infrastructure is available CLI is integrated into a computer-assisted dispatch (CAD) system at the PSAP, and is displayed with other information to a PSAP operator when they receive the call, which is meant to provides emergency responders with the location of the emergency without the person calling for help having to provide it. Regulations governing telecommunications providers in the United States require the provision of caller location infrastructure, but there is no requirement that PSAPs be able to receive such information.
Despite these regulations, deficiencies in the existing telecommunications infrastructure have challenged callers, dispatch operators, and first responders. For example, the PSAP to which a particular call is routed may not, under certain circumstances, be the appropriate or nearest service provider, in some cases because the emergency telephone system was based on the wire-line system where a number was assigned to a specific address rather than modern digital and/or wireless systems where the number and location of the calling party may or may not be related to a billing or other physical address. In addition, digital phone systems are capable of configuration by an administrator or end user to store, among other things, additional information about the device and users, with the assistance of or independently of the telecommunications provider, but the telecommunications infrastructure is not presently configured to transmit the information in a format that CADs or other PSAP systems can use.
As a result, dialing an emergency telephone number from a mobile device or digital telephone may connect the call to an incorrect or inconvenient PSAP and/or a default PSAP such as the state police or highway patrol of the locality or other jurisdiction for example where a calling number is provisioned or a cell tower is located, instead of the appropriate PSAP. Initiating a call to the incorrect PSAP in an emergent situation can result in failure to connect a caller to the appropriate emergency responders, or at minimum delay an emergency response and require a caller to describe the location of an emergency so a dispatcher may transfer or relay the call to the correct emergency service provider or dispatcher. Furthermore, modern CADs and other telecommunications and emergency infrastructure are incapable of receiving information about the device and users in addition to location and subscriber name that can now be programmed into wireless devices and other digital communications equipment connected to specific end-users.
There are standards for systems designed to integrate telephone and emergency systems. CADs and other systems that enhance the ability of dispatchers and call-center employees to integrate telecommunications and data systems such as informatics are generally referred to as telematics. In the United States, the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) sets the standard formats and protocols for Automatic Location Identification (ALI) data exchange between Service Providers and Data Base Management System Providers, a GIS data model, a Data Dictionary, and formats for data exchange between the ALI Database and PSAP Controller equipment. The existing ALI standard for Telematics is flexible but there are preferred formats, and there are requirements and conventions that are specific to certain jurisdictions.
The gap in capability between end-user equipment and emergency service providers is due partly to legacy configurations of existing equipment that must meet ALI and other CAD/Telematics standards in order to be backwards-compatible, and the inability of service providers to predict emerging development in end-user equipment capability quickly enough to implement new systems or update existing ones before they are overcome by the need for further enhancements.
Although national and international regulatory agencies such as the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have issued regulations requiring licensed telecommunications providers of digital services such as wireless carriers and Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) providers to determine and transmit the location of emergency telephone number callers, limited funding, the complexity of the coordination required from wireless carriers, PSAPs, local telephone companies and other affected organizations, and other factors have hampered the standardization and conversion of handsets, other mobile devices, telecommunications infrastructure, CADs, and other PSAP and telecommunications equipment to implement the required changes. Nevertheless, some enhanced technology has been implemented that is useful for the provisioning of emergency services, for instance, newer wireless handsets are equipped to determine their location using that one or more of, for example, Global Positioning System (GPS), wireless networks, cell towers, and other navigation and positioning technologies.
What is needed, then, is a method and system capable of providing enhanced location and other information available from programmable digital end-user communications devices to PSAPs and other emergency responders using existing CADs and other telecommunications infrastructure and technology which is compatible with existing regulations and telematics standards, and which has the ability to enhance these existing systems without major re-fitting as technology develops and standards change.